CHAMPAIGN – The Champaign City Council has given a tentative go-ahead to a $35 million redevelopment proposal for the old Burnham Hospital site.

Council members voted unanimously, 8-0, to support the broad outlines of a potential development agreement with The Atkins Group under which the city would demolish the old hospital and environmentally clean up the site by next spring. In turn, Atkins would spend $35 million buying the 7-acre site from the city and constructing 330 to 340 apartments and 12,000 to 26,000 square feet of retail space over the next two years.

URBANA – The north side of the University of Illinois campus is filled with cranes, backhoes and cement mixers.

Construction for a new National Center for Supercomputing Applications building will begin in the next few weeks, and contractors should finish the exterior of the Siebel Center for Computer Science next month. While the new buildings mean more space for laboratories and researchers, they also mean more people needing a parking space every day when they come to work. And the buildings are going up where several small parking lots used to be.

SPRINGFIELD – Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office has issued settlement demands to the University of Illinois and others responsible for the ammonia spill that killed more than 100,000 fish in the Saline Branch and Salt Fork River in July 2002.

Attorney Jim Morgan of the attorney general's office said the state is seeking penalties, recovery of the costs of investigations, a study of damage to the waterways and an evaluation of activities that can be undertaken to improve the quality of the river.

CHAMPAIGN – When Champaign County Convention and Visitors Bureau officials looked around for a common destination for tourists in the local community, they didn't have to look beyond the heady lure of new clothes, carousel rides and a food court.

"They all go out to the mall," said Sue Wedig, marketing director for the local visitors bureau.

URBANA – Current and former residents of a west Champaign neighborhood are hoping a Champaign County jury will find one of their industrial neighbors responsible for damage to their property and award them money.

Eighty plaintiffs brought suit in March 1991 against Alloy Engineering & Casting of Champaign, 1700 W. Washington St., C, alleging that the company, which makes exhaust manifolds for General Motors light trucks and sport utility vehicles, has emitted particles into the air that damaged their homes and cars and diminished their general enjoyment of their property.